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  • ”At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product.”
    – Paul Hawken
  • ”In the short term, we must realize that we have better ways to create jobs and build the economy than holding an everything must go sale on our precious resources.”
    – Dr. David Suzuki
  • ”Who’s gonna stand up and save the Earth? Who’s gonna say that she’s had enough?”
    – Neil Young
  • ”Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”I have – over the last five years – quite rapidly become a Malthusian. I have been won over by the data, and I have been won over by the logic of the math.”
    – Jeremy Grantham
    investment strategist
  • ”We can’t frack our way back to economic prosperity; nor can we unplug a coal plant, plug in a solar panel, and go on expanding population and consumption.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”There will inevitably come a time that the society drastically needs to change the way it interacts with the environment, or it will lose its coherence.”
    – Sander van der Leeuw
  • ”We’ve globalized an utterly untenable economic model of hyperconsumerism. It’s now successfully spreading across the world, and it’s killing us.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”The inescapable failure of a society built upon growth and its destruction of the Earth’s living systems are the overwhelming facts of our existence.”
    – George Monbiot
    Guardian columnist
  • ”Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
    – E.F. Schumacher
    author: Small is Beautiful
  • ”If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be saved by people with the old vision but new programs.”
    – Daniel Quinn
    author: Ishmael and The Story of B
  • ”I have – over the last five years – quite rapidly become a Malthusian. I have been won over by the data, and I have been won over by the logic of the math.”
    – Jeremy Grantham
    investment strategist
  • ”This is not about whales anymore. It’s about us.”
    – Thomas Friedman
  • ”The free-market fundamentalists will tell you that more growth, more stuff and 9 billion people going shopping is the best we can do. They’re wrong. We can be more. We can be much more.”
    – Paul Gilding
    author: The Great Disruption
  • ”Our economic activity is at war with the planet.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”You don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.”
    – Paul Ehrlich
    author: The Population Bomb
  • ”In today’s full world, resources are not only scarce but have become the limiting factor”
    – Herman Daly
    former World Bank senior economist
  • ”We can share the earth and take care of it together, rather than trying to possess it, destroying the beauty of life in the process.”
    – Dalai Lama
  • ”Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
    – Kenneth Boulding
    economist
  • ”We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it.”
    – Paul Hawken
  • ”As I see it, humanity needs to reduce its impact on the Earth urgently and there are three ways to achieve this: we can stop consuming so many resources, we can change our technology and we can reduce the growth of our population.”
    – Sir David Attenborough
  • ”You don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.”
    – Paul Ehrlich
    author: The Population Bomb
  • ”Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
    – Edward Abbey
  • ”Our economic activity is at war with the planet.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”We’re going to need some kind of radical break with our past behavior if we’re to engineer a viable future.”
    – Mark Buchanan
    Bloomberg columnist
  • ”A growing nation is the greatest ponzi game ever contrived.”
    – Paul Samuelson
    economist
  • ”The truth is this: the Earth cannot provide enough food and fresh water for 10 billion people, never mind homes, never mind roads, hospitals and schools.”
    – Richard Branson
  • ”Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”A growing nation is the greatest ponzi game ever contrived.”
    – Paul Samuelson
    economist
  • ”There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.”
    – Mahatma Ghandhi
  • ”Long-term sustainability requires a materially smaller economy (the pie) shared more equitably (not equally) by a smaller population.”
    – William Rees
    Co-originator of Ecological Footprint Analysis
  • ”We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children.”
    – Joe Romm
    physicist
  • ”We can’t frack our way back to economic prosperity; nor can we unplug a coal plant, plug in a solar panel, and go on expanding population and consumption.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be saved by people with the old vision but new programs.”
    – Daniel Quinn
    author: Ishmael and The Story of B
  • ”On the one hand, it’s politically impossible to stop growth. On the other hand, it’s biophysically impossible to continue it ad infinitum. So, which impossibility is fundamentally impossible?”
    – Herman Daly
    former World Bank senior economist
  • ”Population is the multiplier of everything we do wrong.”
    – Dr. Martha M. Campbell
  • ”Because of this civilization’s obsession with growth, its demise is 100 percent predictable. We simply cannot go on living this way.”
    – Adam Sacks

Fear of Rejection

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

Film festival season is upon us. Sundance begins this week, followed by dozens of festivals over the next 4 months. I feel festivals should be a key part of the distribution strategy for GrowthBusters. The film easily attracts enlightened audiences who already understand the scale of the human enterprise has outgrown the planet. We’ve reached a deadly level of combined population size and economic throughput. The challenge is to raise awareness among those who haven’t yet gotten the message. Festivals are a great opportunity to reach audiences who otherwise might not hear about the film or be inspired to attend a community screening.

So I spent the last of our film budget on festival entry fees as 2011 came to a close. This month the notices of rejection or acceptance have begun to come in. . . .

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How Do I Become a Growthbuster?

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

I just finished a great conversation via Skype with an audience in Salem, Oregon who viewed GrowthBusters tonight. Thanks to the Salem Progressive Film Series, I was able to answer questions and participate in the event without jumping on a jet airplane, increasing my footprint, and decreasing my bank account. The questions and comments indicated this audience understands it is time for some great change!

2008-09-h

That’s obviously not me in this picture. This is what it would have looked like if I had been there. This photo is from a previous event with another filmmaker, much too tiny to identify.

I promised the crowd I’d share a couple things via my blog. The first of which is a link to great commentary written by former Salem Mayor Mike Swaim. I’m grateful to Mike for doing a great interview for the film, and for joining the screening tonight in person. I was drawn to Mike because I hadn’t run across  many elected officials who understood growth is frequently not in our best interest, and were willing to speak candidly about it. Check out Anti-Growth or Pro-Community? Salem’s Mayor Makes His Case. . . .

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Growth Culture Page-Turners

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

People have asked what I’m reading, so I thought I’d spend a few blog posts sharing the titles on my desk, on my kitchen counter, on my coffee table, on the nightstand, and on the floor next to that night stand. Today I will list some novels that explore these issues.

Because of the overwhelming workload of producing GrowthBusters, I have not read any non-fiction for the past several years, so at present I can only recommend these as works exploring the human predicament. I do encourage you to check them out and let me know what you think. I’m sure I’m leaving out some important titles. Please add to this list via the comments below. And look forward in the coming weeks to some lists of incredible non-fiction works. . . .

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Don’t Shop!

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

Even if we could, it wouldn’t be in our best interest to consume our way out of recession.

Today is the biggest shopping day of the year, known as Black Friday. Is that something to celebrate? Or is it something we should try to change? In the U.S., the National Retail Federation is expecting a record number of people to shop today – nearly half the entire population. Shopping will be the number one news story today and throughout the weekend. That will be followed by a flurry of news reports about Cyber Monday.

consumerismYet my advice is, “Please don’t shop.” Resist the urge to do your patriotic duty and buy things you and your loved ones don’t really need. Why? It’s rather simple, even though it’s something we rarely think or talk about: The scale of the human enterprise has outgrown the planet. The ecosystems that support our civilization are buckling under the pressure. We are in a global emergency. We need to, as quickly as possible, leave behind us the era of consumption and economic growth. Repeat after me, “I am not a consumer, I am a human being.” . . .

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GrowthBusters Premiere Report

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

I’ve heard from a few of you anxious for a report on the GrowthBusters World Premiere. Apologies for keeping you in suspense. The last four weeks were a whirlwind of activity for me.

First was the presentation and sneak preview of clips at the Center for Environmental Filmmaking on October 25. The next week was our World Premiere in Washington DC on November 2. A week later we held the Colorado Premiere, and then last week was the Bay Area Premiere. This four-week intensive came right on the heels of a Summer/Fall post production binge to finish the film before world population hit 7 billion (31st of October). So finally I am home for a stretch and relearning how to sleep, breathe, relax, exercise and generally have a life. It feels very, very good! . . .

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